The Associated PressOregon's A.J. Acosta, center, raises his arm as he finishes in second place behind teammate Matthew Centrowitz, right, in the men's 1,500 meters at the Pac-10 track and field championships. Acosta also placed third in the 5,000 meters and fourth in the steeplechase. EUGENE -- A.J. Acosta, the guy who sacrificed his body to help Oregon to the Pacific-10 Conference championship, mused this week about his place in the UO program.

It's not always easy being a mid-distance runner on a team containing Andrew Wheating, an Olympian in the 800 meters, and Matthew Centrowitz, third on the Ducks' all-time 1,500-meter list.

"It's a little disappointing to be the third-best miler on the team," Acosta said. "If I was in any other program in the country, people would be talking about my national title aspirations. Being the third guy on this team is like being a role player."

Some role player.

Acosta heads into the NCAA West Regional track and field meet -- which begins Thursday in Austin, Texas -- with the college level's third best 1,500 time this season, 3 minutes 39.44 seconds, behind Wheating and New Mexico's Lee Emanuel.

Two weeks ago, he shouldered an almost impossible triple, placing fourth in the steeplechase, second in the 1,500 and third in the 5,000 as the Ducks held off fast-closing USC for the Pac-10 title.

His 5,000 time that day -- 13:46.87 -- is the 10th best on the college level this year.

There are more tough workdays ahead. Acosta will attempt to qualify this week for the NCAA Championships in both the 1,500 and the 5,000 at the regional, which the NCAA calls the West preliminary round.

NCAA West Preliminary Round

Where: Mike A. Myers Stadium, Austin, Texas

When: Begins Thursday, 10 a.m., continues through Saturday.

What to watch: The top 12 finishers in every event but the decathlon and heptathlon advance to the NCAA Championships, June 9-12 in Eugene.

Saturday in Mike A. Myers Stadium, the UO junior expects to run both the 5,000 and the final qualifying round of the 1,500.

Assuming Acosta gets through qualifying, the finals for the 1,500 and the 5,000 are on the last day of the NCAA Championships, 51 minutes apart.

"It's probably going to be the hardest thing I've ever done," Acosta said. "Hopefully, there is a team title on the line."

Acosta showed at the Pac-10 meet what he can accomplish when playing for those kind of stakes.

"A.J was going to do whatever he had to do," UO coach Vin Lananna said. "That's his value system."

It was, perhaps, understated compared with the big, flashy way Acosta came to Oregon out of El Camino High in Oceanside, Calif.

He won the 2005 national Foot Locker Cross Country Championship and the 2006 U.S. Junior 1,500 title. In high school, he wore a headband bearing the words "A.J. Bumbaye," a slogan taken from the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire that has been translated as, "Ali, kill him."

But when Acosta first landed at Oregon, Galen Rupp was the distance star. Since Acosta's arrival, Wheating has been to the Olympic Games and Centrowitz clocked the fastest 1,500 by an Oregon runner in a quarter century.

"It's not like I'm a blue-chip guy who came in and faded," Acosta said. "I think I've exceeded the expectations of what I was going to do here."

Still, the guy who told a San Diego newspaper in 2006 that "I want to be a legend," was overshadowed on his own team.

The frustration boiled over last spring after Acosta's season had been sidetracked by a right foot stress fracture and an Achilles tendon injury. Anonymous posters on track-oriented Web sites hearkened back to Acosta's brash prep days and gleefully heckled him.

In May, Acosta told the Oregon Daily Emerald he had been suspended indefinitely for breaking curfew at the 2009 NCAA Indoor Championships, and for being present at a party in which distance runner Luke Puskedra fell and cut himself seriously enough to be taken to a hospital emergency room.

"They had to suspend somebody," Acosta told the Daily Emerald, seeming to intimate he was being made a scapegoat.

Lananna declined to discuss the specifics of the case, both then and earlier this week.

"A.J. is very opinionated," Lananna said. "I think sometimes he says things without a filter, and doesn't think about the ramifications. But I respect his athletic ability, and I think his intentions always are the best."

Now, Acosta takes ownership for creating his own problem.

"When you're not happy, you try to put the blame on other people," he said. "I think I was upset I wasn't running fast. A lot of that was my own doing. ... A lot of it was trying to grow up, trying to find out who I am in the whole process, and how I fit into the grand scheme of things."

As it turns out, he is a huge part of the lineup Lananna is piecing together to challenge Texas A&M and Florida for this year's national title.

The UO coach loves Acosta's grit and ability to rise the occasion. So do his teammates.

This year, Acosta needed a qualifying time to make the UO traveling squad for the NCAA Indoor Championships, and reeled off 3:58.08 mile at a Seattle last-chance meet.

"He's a gamer, a guy who can count on to come up clutch in a race when you need him," Centrowitz said. "He'll do whatever he has to do."

Two weeks ago in the Pac-10 5,000, Acosta should been exhausted. Nobody expected him to run with the leaders into the last lap of a what turned out to be a fast race.

Knowing how close the meet had become, Lananna crossed his fingers, then watched Acosta shred the form charts.

If he could do that then, why not take on the difficult, postseason 1,500/5,000 double now? Acosta is willing. In fact, he suggested it.

"I'm fine with it," Acosta said. "It's better to be a role player on the Lakers than to be some no-name playing for the cellar dweller."